LEGAL REGULATION OF USING SECRET COOPERATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATING CRIMINAL OFFENSES

Abstract

The use of secret cooperation for the purpose of investigating criminal offenses is an established and effective practice that ensures timely identification and prevention of crimes, allows to prevent the commission of crimes. However, today this activity is actually outside the law, as it is not regulated by legislation and is not properly regulated at the level of subordinate acts. The purpose of the article is to refine the problem of legislative regulation of using secret cooperation for the purpose of investigating criminal offenses. The main results of the study are the justification that the use of secret cooperation for the purpose of investigating criminal offenses should be based on the norms of the law, which would establish the activity, which in theory and in practice is called «operative search». At the same time, proposals on determining the content of operative search and the list and content of specific measures that are tools for its implementation are given. Those of these tools, the conspiratorial use of which can be entrusted to undercover employees, are identified, namely: interviewing people with their voluntary consent; inspection of publicly accessible objects; inspection of publicly inaccessible objects with the voluntary consent of the persons under whose control they are; receiving confidential information with the consent of persons who have access to it; search surveillance. The research made it possible to come to the conclusion that in order to legally regulate the use of secret cooperation for the purpose of investigating criminal offenses, the Law of Ukraine «On operative-search activity» requires: first, to regulate operative search as the initial stage of operative-search activity, at which operative units, on their own initiative, take measures to find and record information on: preparation of a crime; attempts to commit crimes; committing a completed (but undetected) crime; secondly, to the grounds of operative-search activity (Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine «On operative-search activity»), include the item: «prevention, early detection and suppression of crimes and expose the causes and conditions conducive to the crime»; thirdly, submit a comprehensive list of operational-search measures; fourthly, to provide for the possibility of conspiratorial implementation of specific operational-search measures by an undercover employee; fifth, separately and in detail regulate the most important issues of secret cooperation, namely: its content and forms, the mechanism of attracting people to cooperation, the powers of secret employees, the issue of ensuring their conspiracy, security and social protection, etc.